Memory devices are typically provided as internal, semiconductor, integrated circuits in computers or other electronic systems. There are many different types of memory including volatile and non-volatile memory. Volatile memory can require power to maintain its data (e.g., host data, error data, etc.) and includes random access memory (RAM), dynamic random access memory (DRAM), static random access memory (SRAM), synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM), and thyristor random access memory (TRAM), among others. Non-volatile memory can provide persistent data by retaining stored data when not powered and can include NAND flash memory, NOR flash memory, and resistance variable memory such as phase change random access memory (PCRAM), resistive random access memory (RRAM), and magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), such as spin torque transfer random access memory (STT RAM), among others.
Electronic systems often include a number of processing resources (e.g., one or more processors), which may, generate, retrieve, and execute applications (e.g., executable files such as software programs) to perform various tasks, for instance. An application can be generated, for example, by transforming (e.g., via a compiler) source code written in a particular programming language (e.g., a high level language) into an object file (e.g., a file comprising relocatable object code written in a low level machine language and/or assembly language). In various instances, a linker may be used to combine a number of object files, which may not be directly executable by the processing resources, into an executable file. The executable file can be stored in memory and retrieved therefrom by the processor for execution at runtime. The executable file can be relocatable in that its actual physical location in memory can change each time it is executed. Virtual addressing can be used (e.g., by an operating system) to manage translation of virtual addresses corresponding to an executable file to the appropriate physical addresses in memory.
A processor can comprise a number of functional units such as arithmetic logic unit (ALU) circuitry, floating point unit (FPU) circuitry, and/or a combinatorial logic block, for example, which can comprise a number of registers and can be used to execute instructions by performing logical operations such as AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR, and XOR logical operations on operands. For example, the number of functional units, which may be referred to as functional unit circuitry, may be used to perform arithmetic operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and/or division on operands. In many instances, the processing resources may be external to a memory device comprising a memory array in which the instructions to be executed (e.g., the executable file) are stored. The instructions to be executed can be accessed (e.g., retrieved from the memory array) via a bus between the processing resources and the memory device, for example.
Since the locations of the functional units (e.g., registers) of the processor are known (e.g., fixed) at compile time, in many instances, an object file generated by a compiler includes instructions whose arguments are indices to particular registers of a processor. Therefore, at runtime (e.g., when an executable file comprising the object file is loaded to a particular physical location in memory and executed), the arguments (e.g., operands) of the target instructions within the executable file can be provided to the appropriate registers based on the known virtual addresses of the arguments.